They want time to learn from their mistakes? OK, fine. Let’s hope they learn that apologising to the wokerati gets you nowhere except further down on your knees. You want a model to learn from? Donald Trump. Crass, vulgar and ignorant as a dog, yet STILL morally and ethically superior to the most evolved and enlightened philosopher the left ever produced.
Dear God. I don’t know what part of this piece depressed me most (competition, it must be said, was fierce). Even so, thank you: it was enlightening, if not encouraging. Always worth knowing what’s coming down the pipe – and which Quislings are abetting it.
Peter Francis
2 years ago
Many thanks to Heather Mac Donald for this piece. I saw Scottish Opera’s wonderful production of Nixon in China. The reason why Scottish Opera are such craven cowards in the face of wokery is obvious. In 2019-20 they got more than 60% of their income from the Scottish Government. Nothing terrifies institutions in Civic Scotland more than an accusation of racism, even a baseless accusation. The philistines in the Scottish Government will use it as an excuse to cut the subsidy.
Foregoing a prestigious award will be seen by the Scottish Opera Board as a price well worth paying in order to avoid a controversy.
“Dark times indeed! (Can even say that?)”. I was even worried that my use of “philistines” might incur someone’s wrath.
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago
“ If there are fewer Asian singers on opera stages than in the orchestra pit, that is because Asian involvement with Western classical music began with the string instruments. But training in Western opera techniques is catching up fast.” Cultural appropriation. Why would Asians be allowed to practice a Western cultural form? Don’t they have their own musical tradition? And no, the argument that it’s OK for them as a less powerful group to be allowed to do what a more privileged group cannot, doesn’t stand because, in case no one’s noticed, the Chinese are a very powerful country, and for many centuries have been a powerful culture. And if you think they don’t consider themselves superior, go and live there for a few years, as I did. But back then we (both sides) didn’t think so much of ‘privilege & equity’ but more of sharing friendship and cultures.
Simon Denis
2 years ago
The simple answer to all this is freedom. An opera director should cast whomsoever he likes in whichever roles he pleases but by the same token should receive no subsidy; nor should the nit-picking bullies currently shelling out the subsidies have any further influence over what he does. And if the audience is pleased, the production will survive. The result will probably be some form of “segregation”, but if it happens spontaneously, so what? Apartheid is only a crime if it’s imposed. “Togetherness” becomes a crime by the same means. And the nature of that segregation? Cultural – not racial. I’ll bet there are plenty of minority members, old fashioned enough in their Anglophilia, who long to see traditional production of classic plays with no absurd distortions in the name of “woke” lies. No pretence, for example, that Anne Boleyn was anything other than European in race. The longer this racial gravy train goes rattling on, the nearer it approaches to the abyss; and the more various groups of passengers will clamour for this or that morsel of “representation” in every last staging of the least, little play:
“If Julius Caesar’s going to be Chinese, then I DEMAND that Mark Antony is black!”
“But he’s only five foot two!”
“Good! So much the better! A blow for the short!”
And so, miserably, anti-artistically, slavishly, on.
Andrew D
2 years ago
My first experience of opera, or operetta at least, was as an 8-year-old -a local amdram production of The Mikado, with a fully ‘yellowed up’ cast. Loved it. Don’t suppose that’s a pleasure that this generation will ever experience.
Incidentally, when did the term ‘yellow’ become derogatory? My daughter and I were discussing cheesy Christmas songs the other day, and she said she couldn’t have Johnny Mathis’ When a Child is Born on her playlist because of the line ‘black, white, yellow, no-one knows’. Black and white were OK, but somehow yellow was offensive. We know Asiatics aren’t literally yellow, any more than anyone is literally black or white, unless they are very charred, or dead (or both). Then there’s Lennon and Yoko’s Happy Christmas (War is Over): ‘And so happy Christmas, For black and for white, for yellow and red ones, let’s stop all the fight’. Are the proto-arch-priests of woke now to be cancelled? Yoko herself is yellow!
Perry de Havilland
2 years ago
At least part of me, not the kinder part (there is one, believe it or not), wants to see it all burn. Any institution that “begged for space to learn from its errors” will get no sympathy from me. The only correct response is some creative variations on “get stuffed, you utterly contemptible identitarian left scum.”
I would be sad if that happened, despite the cringeworthy apology. Sadly, it’s another institution that has caved in to self appointed bullies. Enjoyed patronising the RSNO for a few years now and loved every performance. Bit of a problem that few others dress in evening wear, but that’s another matter.
My Nixon in China tickets sit, unused, in a drawer due to isolation. A souvenir of a strange time. Very sorry I missed it.
You can see the lunacy and contradictions in the BEATS response. Astoundingly ignorant and predicated on intergenerational guilt. Wonder what the modern day CCP would make of a South Korean performer playing Mao.
Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Sue Julians
2 years ago
Good piece.
Interesting that it didn’t discuss the all black casting rule for Porgy and Bess, as stipulated by the Gershwin estate. A Hungarian production recently tried to get around this rule by asking the cast to sign a declaration that they identified with being African American.
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Surely the ultimate logic is that all performance is either “appropriation” or “misrepresentation” and must be stopped.
When are these fools in the Arts going to grow spines and tell these dullards to take a hike.
That’s exactly what this is all about: well-heeled internationals turning indigenous European populations into second-class citizens – all assisted by their useful idiots, the woke kapo’s.
Thank you for this article. Horribly depressing. If this situation would have been forseen in a dystopian novel or film it would either be a laugh-a-minute farce or a very gloomy piece. But it’s happening right now. Do we laugh or cry….?
Edit Szegedi
2 years ago
Hitler goes Stalin goes Mao goes Pol Pot goes Hitler
Michael James
2 years ago
Can’t the opera and theatre world follow South Africa’s erstwhile apartheid regime (more than it already does) by allowing actors to become ‘honorary’ members of other races? The South African government made Japanese people ‘honorary’ whites for the purpose of navigating its racial divides. Very imaginative, and truly artistic!
Last edited 2 years ago by Michael James
Brendan Newport
2 years ago
The introduction of racialist thinking into British society is seemingly going to plan. Nonetheless it will take some time to gain any appreciation from the paying public who will increasingly see casting choices as racialist decisions. I don’t reckon the arts is benefitting from this throwback thought process from the US of the 1950s.
Judy Simpson
2 years ago
I’m still confused. When I saw Sumi Jo play Lucia di Lammermoor all those years ago, was that progressive or regressive?
Black plays white = diversity = good.
White plays black = cultural appropriation = bad.
Phil Simmons
2 years ago
The philistinism and complete ignorance of artistic history on display here render me almost speechless. ‘Yellowface’? These people are mad.
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
Then there are the understudies. Could an exemption be found for them? Just to keep the show on the road? The good folk pleased and entertained? Imagine the sighs of disappointment among a theatre audience, a fairly liberal one at that, on hearing that the lead actor or singer had fallen and broken his or her leg, but their relief that the understudy was there to step into his or her shoes: “I don’t care who the understudy is. I just want a show regardless. I’ve come all this way for it.” (What if they are parents visiting their child’s school’s production of the particular play or show?). All and sundry in the West have been invited to participate in the arts and entertainments. Are the “my bad” cries going up, however, at the moment, the effect of a movement taking the fun factor out of the arts? To unsettle people? To spoil the benefits of freedom and the artistic imagination? The message to government over the last year of the pandemic from the arts world has been that the arts are vital to the soul, our health – we cannot live without it. (As the pop group Abba back in 1977 sang, “Without a song and a dance, what are we?”). Why, on the other hand, do down the West’s achievements? To all of a sudden take on notions about feeling guilty? Guilt for what? Surely no-one wants to cut one’s nose off to spite one’s face! It’s as if the report card is: the West must do better. At the start of Laurel and Harry’s 1931 classic short feature, Another Fine Mess, just before the famous cuckoo theme tune of theirs comes in and the credits roll, two young girls appear on a stage to introduce in unison the short: “Hal Roach presents, for your entertainment and approval, Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess.” Of course, they say this with more than a little irony. But now, it seems, for-your-approval is back; the entertainment a dead loss.
Charles Lewis
2 years ago
The Beeb were blatantly, even absurdly, very woke for their excellent ‘Cardiff Singer of the World’.But it is not possible to know if there were better contestants from the whitey mob who were pased over, whereas it is possible to know that the winner, a baritone from Korea, was absolutely superb. I recommend anyone interested in opera go to playback of the second round on i-player, at point 53, and listen to his singing of the Pierrot song from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt. In more than 60 years of listening and attending opera I have not heard a better performance of any aria by any singer (the judges weere literally in tears at the end, — two of them anyway).
Would the mad creatures we read about in the above excellent article stop Gihoon Kim singing this piece or playing this part as he is not German (the language), Austrian (the composer) or Dutch (the mise-en-scène)?
Thank you for reminding – for a couple of years now I’ve been trying to remember this short story I read as a child, I was even citing some parts of it, but for the life of me couldn’t remember the author or the name!
Stephen Rose
2 years ago
I wonder if casting white performers in Kabuki or Noh theatre is progressive in Japan? The revealing aspect of all this is how truly it reflects Western centric conceit. The progress/good casting is such an absurd labyrinth it could only be formulated by those in academia and the arts that are looking to exercise cultural dominance.It is a cultural dead-end, which will end up limiting the imagination. Leontin Price, Willlard White
Barbara Hendricks to name but a few, are among many non white performers, who have been thrilling opera audiences for decades. Good article, I read something similar on Quillette. We need to hear the voices of those who experienced Communism, to recall where this stuff leads.
John Potts
2 years ago
I can imagine that a remake of “Elephant Man” is going to be hard to cast. Not to mention films about Jack the Ripper.
Kirsten Walstedt
2 years ago
As always, it’s not the goofy protests that hurt, but the capitulation.
They want time to learn from their mistakes? OK, fine. Let’s hope they learn that apologising to the wokerati gets you nowhere except further down on your knees. You want a model to learn from? Donald Trump. Crass, vulgar and ignorant as a dog, yet STILL morally and ethically superior to the most evolved and enlightened philosopher the left ever produced.
Well put
Dear God. I don’t know what part of this piece depressed me most (competition, it must be said, was fierce). Even so, thank you: it was enlightening, if not encouraging. Always worth knowing what’s coming down the pipe – and which Quislings are abetting it.
Many thanks to Heather Mac Donald for this piece. I saw Scottish Opera’s wonderful production of Nixon in China. The reason why Scottish Opera are such craven cowards in the face of wokery is obvious. In 2019-20 they got more than 60% of their income from the Scottish Government. Nothing terrifies institutions in Civic Scotland more than an accusation of racism, even a baseless accusation. The philistines in the Scottish Government will use it as an excuse to cut the subsidy.
Foregoing a prestigious award will be seen by the Scottish Opera Board as a price well worth paying in order to avoid a controversy.
I was wondering how much funding Scottish Opera was getting from the Scottish government.
Dark times indeed! (Can I even say that?)
“Dark times indeed! (Can even say that?)”.
I was even worried that my use of “philistines” might incur someone’s wrath.
“ If there are fewer Asian singers on opera stages than in the orchestra pit, that is because Asian involvement with Western classical music began with the string instruments. But training in Western opera techniques is catching up fast.”
Cultural appropriation. Why would Asians be allowed to practice a Western cultural form? Don’t they have their own musical tradition? And no, the argument that it’s OK for them as a less powerful group to be allowed to do what a more privileged group cannot, doesn’t stand because, in case no one’s noticed, the Chinese are a very powerful country, and for many centuries have been a powerful culture. And if you think they don’t consider themselves superior, go and live there for a few years, as I did. But back then we (both sides) didn’t think so much of ‘privilege & equity’ but more of sharing friendship and cultures.
The simple answer to all this is freedom. An opera director should cast whomsoever he likes in whichever roles he pleases but by the same token should receive no subsidy; nor should the nit-picking bullies currently shelling out the subsidies have any further influence over what he does. And if the audience is pleased, the production will survive. The result will probably be some form of “segregation”, but if it happens spontaneously, so what? Apartheid is only a crime if it’s imposed. “Togetherness” becomes a crime by the same means. And the nature of that segregation? Cultural – not racial. I’ll bet there are plenty of minority members, old fashioned enough in their Anglophilia, who long to see traditional production of classic plays with no absurd distortions in the name of “woke” lies. No pretence, for example, that Anne Boleyn was anything other than European in race. The longer this racial gravy train goes rattling on, the nearer it approaches to the abyss; and the more various groups of passengers will clamour for this or that morsel of “representation” in every last staging of the least, little play:
“If Julius Caesar’s going to be Chinese, then I DEMAND that Mark Antony is black!”
“But he’s only five foot two!”
“Good! So much the better! A blow for the short!”
And so, miserably, anti-artistically, slavishly, on.
My first experience of opera, or operetta at least, was as an 8-year-old -a local amdram production of The Mikado, with a fully ‘yellowed up’ cast. Loved it. Don’t suppose that’s a pleasure that this generation will ever experience.
Incidentally, when did the term ‘yellow’ become derogatory? My daughter and I were discussing cheesy Christmas songs the other day, and she said she couldn’t have Johnny Mathis’ When a Child is Born on her playlist because of the line ‘black, white, yellow, no-one knows’. Black and white were OK, but somehow yellow was offensive. We know Asiatics aren’t literally yellow, any more than anyone is literally black or white, unless they are very charred, or dead (or both). Then there’s Lennon and Yoko’s Happy Christmas (War is Over): ‘And so happy Christmas, For black and for white, for yellow and red ones, let’s stop all the fight’. Are the proto-arch-priests of woke now to be cancelled? Yoko herself is yellow!
At least part of me, not the kinder part (there is one, believe it or not), wants to see it all burn. Any institution that “begged for space to learn from its errors” will get no sympathy from me. The only correct response is some creative variations on “get stuffed, you utterly contemptible identitarian left scum.”
Perry, Thank You, beautifully put!
I would be sad if that happened, despite the cringeworthy apology. Sadly, it’s another institution that has caved in to self appointed bullies. Enjoyed patronising the RSNO for a few years now and loved every performance. Bit of a problem that few others dress in evening wear, but that’s another matter.
My Nixon in China tickets sit, unused, in a drawer due to isolation. A souvenir of a strange time. Very sorry I missed it.
You can see the lunacy and contradictions in the BEATS response. Astoundingly ignorant and predicated on intergenerational guilt. Wonder what the modern day CCP would make of a South Korean performer playing Mao.
Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Good piece.
Interesting that it didn’t discuss the all black casting rule for Porgy and Bess, as stipulated by the Gershwin estate. A Hungarian production recently tried to get around this rule by asking the cast to sign a declaration that they identified with being African American.
Surely the ultimate logic is that all performance is either “appropriation” or “misrepresentation” and must be stopped.
When are these fools in the Arts going to grow spines and tell these dullards to take a hike.
The dullards have already taken over from the fools.
BEATS’ rationalisation has left me speechless.
Clearly the only answer is to cast no white artist in any role. Ever.
That’s exactly what this is all about: well-heeled internationals turning indigenous European populations into second-class citizens – all assisted by their useful idiots, the woke kapo’s.
Except Hitler, of course.
Thank you for this article. Horribly depressing. If this situation would have been forseen in a dystopian novel or film it would either be a laugh-a-minute farce or a very gloomy piece. But it’s happening right now. Do we laugh or cry….?
Hitler goes Stalin goes Mao goes Pol Pot goes Hitler
Can’t the opera and theatre world follow South Africa’s erstwhile apartheid regime (more than it already does) by allowing actors to become ‘honorary’ members of other races? The South African government made Japanese people ‘honorary’ whites for the purpose of navigating its racial divides. Very imaginative, and truly artistic!
The introduction of racialist thinking into British society is seemingly going to plan. Nonetheless it will take some time to gain any appreciation from the paying public who will increasingly see casting choices as racialist decisions. I don’t reckon the arts is benefitting from this throwback thought process from the US of the 1950s.
I’m still confused. When I saw Sumi Jo play Lucia di Lammermoor all those years ago, was that progressive or regressive?
Mass confusion and paralysis is the whole point as it enhances the power of the woke elite.
Black plays white = diversity = good.
White plays black = cultural appropriation = bad.
The philistinism and complete ignorance of artistic history on display here render me almost speechless. ‘Yellowface’? These people are mad.
Then there are the understudies. Could an exemption be found for them? Just to keep the show on the road? The good folk pleased and entertained? Imagine the sighs of disappointment among a theatre audience, a fairly liberal one at that, on hearing that the lead actor or singer had fallen and broken his or her leg, but their relief that the understudy was there to step into his or her shoes: “I don’t care who the understudy is. I just want a show regardless. I’ve come all this way for it.” (What if they are parents visiting their child’s school’s production of the particular play or show?). All and sundry in the West have been invited to participate in the arts and entertainments. Are the “my bad” cries going up, however, at the moment, the effect of a movement taking the fun factor out of the arts? To unsettle people? To spoil the benefits of freedom and the artistic imagination? The message to government over the last year of the pandemic from the arts world has been that the arts are vital to the soul, our health – we cannot live without it. (As the pop group Abba back in 1977 sang, “Without a song and a dance, what are we?”). Why, on the other hand, do down the West’s achievements? To all of a sudden take on notions about feeling guilty? Guilt for what? Surely no-one wants to cut one’s nose off to spite one’s face! It’s as if the report card is: the West must do better. At the start of Laurel and Harry’s 1931 classic short feature, Another Fine Mess, just before the famous cuckoo theme tune of theirs comes in and the credits roll, two young girls appear on a stage to introduce in unison the short: “Hal Roach presents, for your entertainment and approval, Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess.” Of course, they say this with more than a little irony. But now, it seems, for-your-approval is back; the entertainment a dead loss.
The Beeb were blatantly, even absurdly, very woke for their excellent ‘Cardiff Singer of the World’.But it is not possible to know if there were better contestants from the whitey mob who were pased over, whereas it is possible to know that the winner, a baritone from Korea, was absolutely superb. I recommend anyone interested in opera go to playback of the second round on i-player, at point 53, and listen to his singing of the Pierrot song from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt. In more than 60 years of listening and attending opera I have not heard a better performance of any aria by any singer (the judges weere literally in tears at the end, — two of them anyway).
Would the mad creatures we read about in the above excellent article stop Gihoon Kim singing this piece or playing this part as he is not German (the language), Austrian (the composer) or Dutch (the mise-en-scène)?
Accurately predicted by Kurt Vonnegut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Thank you for reminding – for a couple of years now I’ve been trying to remember this short story I read as a child, I was even citing some parts of it, but for the life of me couldn’t remember the author or the name!
I wonder if casting white performers in Kabuki or Noh theatre is progressive in Japan? The revealing aspect of all this is how truly it reflects Western centric conceit. The progress/good casting is such an absurd labyrinth it could only be formulated by those in academia and the arts that are looking to exercise cultural dominance.It is a cultural dead-end, which will end up limiting the imagination. Leontin Price, Willlard White
Barbara Hendricks to name but a few, are among many non white performers, who have been thrilling opera audiences for decades. Good article, I read something similar on Quillette. We need to hear the voices of those who experienced Communism, to recall where this stuff leads.
I can imagine that a remake of “Elephant Man” is going to be hard to cast. Not to mention films about Jack the Ripper.
As always, it’s not the goofy protests that hurt, but the capitulation.